Thursday, March 18, 2010

Questions to the Republican Party

Old people are your base. Medicare is a major reason why the budget deficit is so high. You oppose budget deficits, but at the same time oppose any cuts in Medicare. This fiscal sleight of hand, dressed up in aphorisms such as ‘death plans’ allows you to confuse the elderly to the obvious contradiction between these two major items. If you oppose deficit spending, how can you support continued Medicare benefits at their present level? You have the Michelle Bachmans and Sarah Palins of your party doing all the heavy lifting on these issues because, quite simply put, no one at the federal level bearing a Republican name tag has got the guts to stand up and tell voters what is really necessary here. Either the deficit must be reduced by reducing spending (such as cutting Medicare’s benefits or reducing the 70 billion dollar handout to corporate farmers each year) or by increasing taxes so that income matches outgo. Simple as that; No hysteria about the “uppity one,” no grumbling about Pelosi’s airplane. Why do Republicans avoid answering the obvious questions about President Nixon’s advocacy of a health care plan in the early 1970s? Why do Republicans avoid the fact that their leading presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, led the way in Massachusetts to bring a health care plan similar to the one now pending in Washington to the people of that State? Why do Republicans consider the deficit such a huge problem at this moment while having remained absolutely silent during Bush’s reign of eight years which turned a budget surplus into the largest deficit in the history of the United States? Why is it so convenient for Republicans to forget that Reagan’s initial deep tax cuts were followed by years of his tax increases to reduce deficits smaller than the current ones?